By Farhang Jahanpour
Published in Critique Magazine, 28 August 1999, Volume 8, 1999 Issue 15
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10669929908720152?needAccess=true
On 7th July 1999, the United States imposed sanctions on the Taliban movement, which controls most of Afghanistan, accusing it of supporting the Islamic militant, Osama Bin Laden. This is yet another example of a movement that the United States helped to create, which she is no longer able to control. The inconclusive offensive launched by the Taliban in July 1999 and the continued sanctuary provided to Osama Bin Laden have once again put the continuing tragedy of Afghanistan on the agenda.
A group of international mediators – the so-called Six-Plus-Two – took part in a meeting held under the UN auspices in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, on 19th July 1999 and adopted a declaration on Afghanistan. The group was comprised of the six countries bordering on Afghanistan — Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – as well as Russia and the United States, with the participation of Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi. The meeting was also attended by the representatives of both the Taliban movement and the United Front, that is, the officially recognised government of Afghanistan. Turkmenistan, which has been involved in deals with the Taliban over the transfer of gas to Pakistan, did not sign the declaration. In the declaration, the participants expressed their firm belief that there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict and that it has to be settled by peaceful means through political talks. “We believe that negotiations should be conducted under the UN auspices and can consist of two stages. The main goal of the first stage is to adopt confidence-building measures,” the document said.[1]
“We had the opportunity to get together with the opposition,” Taleban Information Minister Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi told reporters after just over two hours of talks with opposition representatives in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. “We spoke about a cease-fire and exchange of prisoners and a continuation of talks, and now it depends on the decisions of our leaderships.”[2] However, exactly a week after the signing of the Tashkent Declaration, the Taliban forces launched a major offensive against the forces of their main opposition force led by Ahmad Shah Masood in Panjshir valley. Shortly before the offensive, there were reports that the Taliban had been bolstered by the arrival of new recruits – thousands of Pakistanis and hundreds of Arabs – for a fresh offensive against commander Masood’s forces.
During August 1999, there was continuous fighting between the Taliban militia and the opposition forces. Although initially the Taliban made some progress in the Shomali valley, north of Kabul, they were pushed back by the forces of Ahmad Shah Masood after suffering huge losses. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Afghans were again made homeless as a result of the renewed fighting, and the economic plight of the country has grown worse.
In the wake of the offensive launched by the Taliban, between 250,000 and 300,000 residents of the two Provinces situated to the north of Kabul fled to areas under the control of the Northern Alliance in early August, fearing reprisals by the Taliban. Over 45,000 others were taken by the Taliban to Kabul, Jalalabad and some deserted areas in southeastern Afghanistan.[3] On 15th August 1999, the Radio Voice of Shari’ah, controlled by the Taliban, reported that there had been an outbreak of cholera in Konar province and that dozens of Afghans had been killed as a result of this epidemic.[4]
Last year’s successes by the Taliban and their control over a large part of Afghanistan have created a very complex situation which involves not only the neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Iran, which housed millions of Afghan refugees and which have the closest links with Afghanistan, but also the United States, Russia, Central Asian Republics, India and Saudi Arabia. The issues involved in the Afghan conflict include the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, the activities of anti-Western terrorist groups, drug trafficking, the transfer of oil and gas from Central Asia through Afghanistan, and the intensification of many regional conflicts, including the struggle over Kashmir and maybe even in Tajikistan, Chechnya and Dagestan.[5] Therefore, a proper solution must be found to the problem of Afghanistan before the crisis assumes even greater proportions.
The plight of the Afghan people during the past twenty years has been one of the most tragic in the world. It was the heroic Afghans who, without flinching, challenged the USSR when it was a superpower. Once favourites of the West, they later found themselves discarded like a pair of old boots. Hungry, divided and with no prospect in sight of a return to normality after two decades of civil war, they confront the costs: Over one million dead, over six million displaced and the entire fabric of society in tatters. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Afghanistan is one of the most mine-infested countries in the world.[6] According to one estimate, 20-25 people are injured or killed by mines daily in Afghanistan. Grazing land accounted for 75.6 per cent of the mined areas, and agricultural land accounted for 20.2 per cent.[7]
The West owes a great debt of gratitude to the Afghans. In the early days of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, everybody expected that the Soviet control of Afghanistan would endanger the security of the Persian Gulf and the Western oil interests. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave rise to the most serious crisis between the Soviet Union and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis. When President Jimmy Carter issued his Carter Declaration, saying that the Persian Gulf was part of America’s vital interest and America would defend it by all means possible, this was understood as a declaration that, if necessary, the United States would be prepared to make use of nuclear weapons to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf.
It was the victory of the Afghan Mujahedin over the Soviet forces that was instrumental in the collapse of the Soviet Union. It demonstrated, more than any other single factor, the weakness and desperation of the Soviet Union when it was defeated by a small country, despite all the capabilities that the supposed superpower possessed to supply and strengthen its forces in a neighbouring country.
During the years of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the United States and Saudi Arabia spent billions of dollars to supply weapons to the Mujahedin. However, after the defeat of the Soviet forces, the West completely dropped the Afghans, and even a small amount of aid was denied them. Now the same Mujahedin who had been reared by the West are being crushed by the Taliban, who have clearly received the support of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.[8]
The Taliban (an incorrect plural of the Arabic word Talaba, plural tullab) are allegedly students from theological seminaries and religious schools who, inspired by the power of their faith, suddenly rushed out of their religious schools to conquer Afghanistan. If we believe that, we should believe in the power of truly spectacular miracles, because these semi-literate young men emerging out of ramshackle and poverty-stricken madrasas of Peshawar were suddenly armed through divine intervention with aircraft, helicopters, tanks, missiles and a vast quantity of weapons and ammunition. There is a widespread suspicion that the Taliban, members of the Pashtun tribes who predominate in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan and the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, were recruited, armed and trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan with funds coming from Saudi Arabia and the United States. Most of them had never even been to Kabul before 27th September 1996, when they invaded and conquered the city.
Brief history of Afghanistan:
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. The last official census of the country was carried out in 1979 by the UN Fund for Population Activities.[9] That census gave Afghanistan’s population at about 16,000,000. Only 13 per cent of the people were urban dwellers, and nearly one-fifth were nomads. Only 12 per cent of the population were literate. Infant mortality was extremely high, and life expectancy was only 40 years, one of the lowest in the world. Its GDP was given at only 2.8 billion US dollars, about $225 per capita. The situation is definitely even worse now as a result of twenty years of continuous war and carnage.
By 1982, an estimated three million Afghans had fled to Iran, of whom 1.4 million still reside there today, and another three million refugees sought asylum in Pakistan, 1.2 million of whom still remain in Pakistan at this time.[10] Of this population, about 40-45 per cent are Pashtuns, about 35-40 per cent are Tajik. There are about two million Hazara and about 1 million Uzbeks, whose urban centre is Mazar-e Sharif. The rest of them belong to various other religious and ethnic groups, including Isma’ilis, Shahsavan, Kizilbash, Turkman and others. One great achievement of Afghanistan in the past was that these ethnic groups were thoroughly mixed, and they lived harmoniously together. There have been very few instances of major conflicts on ethnic lines in the past. The situation was very similar to former Yugoslavia before the break-up of the union and the start of the ethnic troubles. But unfortunately, since the rise of the Taliban, ethnic hostility and the massacre of non-Pashtun groups have marred the remarkable history of ethnic coexistence in Afghanistan.
The areas in the North and North-West, including the two main cities of Kabul and Herat, are Persian-speaking, while the people in Qandahar, Jalalabad and southern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border, and Pakistan’s North-West frontier, are Pashtu-speaking. Persian acted as the lingua franca, not only among the Tajiks, but also in Kabul and administrative circles generally. Many millions of Pashtuns have lived for many generations inside Pakistan, in “Pashtunistan” and right down to Balochistan. Both the Pashtuns and the Tajiks are Indo-European peoples who migrated to the region about the second millennium BC. In fact, both words Pashtun and Pathan are derived from the old Persian word Parsu or the Assyrian-Babylonian form of it, Parsw-ana, which simply meant Persian. The word Pathan does not occur till the 16th century and was a version of Pashtun. Therefore, from an ethnic point of view, they are very akin to the Tajiks and the Persians. Pashtu is, in its origin and structure, an Iranian language, although it has borrowed freely from Indo-Aryan languages. It was mainly a means of oral communication among southern Afghan tribes. There is no Pashtu literary work older than the 17th century. There are a number of theological and historical works, and the 17th and 18th centuries are rich in poets, but most of them are imitations of Persian models.[11]
The term Afghanistan has only been in use for 200 years. Throughout history, present Afghanistan was not known by one name, but by its various provinces that were parts of various empires, mainly the Persian Empire. For the greater part of its history, the present Afghanistan and the present Iran have formed parts of the same extended country, and the Afghans and the Iranians formed a single people, with the capital of the empire being situated either in Susa, Persepolis, Ecbatana, Isfahan or Rey in present Iran or in parts of the present day Afghanistan, including Balkh, Ghazna or Herat. The term Afghan as referring to the people, rather than the land, was first mentioned in a Persian geographical text written in 982 AD.
The area was initially part of the Achaemenian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in 555 BC. In about 325, it was conquered by Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s conquest, this area became part of the Seleucid satrapy of Bactria (Balkh). After the disappearance of the Seleucids, the country was divided between the Parthian Empire in Iran and the Maurya Empire of Northern India. Hindu and especially Buddhist influences came from India and lasted till the coming of Islam, while the Western part of the country was mainly under Iranian influence and the Zoroastrian religion. Nearly the whole of Afghanistan was again conquered by the Sasanian Empire, which ruled from 225-650 AD.
With the coming of Islam, parts of Afghanistan resisted for a while, as did many parts of Iran, but under the Saffarids (c. 870 AD), Islam became firmly entrenched. Towards the end of the tenth century, Turkic groups invaded Afghanistan and Iran from the north and established the Ghaznavid dynasty, which ruled from AD 977 to 1186. The Ghaznavids conquered Northwest India and the Punjab, and a large part of Iran. The capital of the empire, Ghazni, in present-day Afghanistan, was a centre of intellectual and artistic excellence. The Mongols under Genghis Khan invaded Afghanistan in 1219 and carved a great empire consisting of present-day Afghanistan and large parts of Iran.[12]
Therefore, from the sixth century BC to the thirteenth century AD, Afghanistan was almost entirely part and parcel of a kingdom which included present Iran and present Afghanistan. The dissolution of the Mongol Empire resulted in the rise of mostly independent principalities, and until the 18th century, Afghanistan existed partly within the Mughal Empire of India and the Safavid Persia. In 1719, the new Afghan ruler of Qandahar, Mir Mahmoud, exploited the weakness of the Safavid Empire and marched on the Persian cities of Kerman, Yazd and Isfahan. His cousin Ashraf took power in 1725. However, only four years later, in 1729, the Persian leader Nadir Shah defeated Ashraf and even took control of the whole of Afghanistan from the Mughals. He moved on Herat in 1732, Qandahar in 1738 and Lahore and Delhi in 1739, and returned westwards to take Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva in Central Asia, before returning to Mashhad.[13]
When Nadir Shah was assassinated, he was succeeded in Afghanistan by his chief bodyguard, Ahmad Khan Abdali, who assumed the name of Ahmad Shah Durrani. Under Ahmad Shah Durrani, the whole of Afghanistan was united under his rule in the form of a separate principality, and it is only at this time that the term Afghanistan was used to refer to the whole country. Ahmad Shah invaded India several times and added the provinces of Kashmir, Lahore and Multan, that is the greater part of Punjab, to his kingdom.
After Ahmad Shah Durrani’s death (1773), his son and successor, Timur Shah, moved the capital to Kabul, where the population is largely Tajik, following growing tensions with the local Pashtuns of Qandahar. Under Timur Shah, the empire foundered because of recurring tribal and family loyalties. Timur Shah’s death in 1793 heralded a prolonged period of disunity. He was succeeded by his son Zaman Shah, who was dethroned by his brother Mahmud Shah in 1800. Mahmud Shah, who was trying to champion the cause of Islam against Sikhs and Maharattas, came into collision with the British, now becoming the ruling power in North India. Mahmud lost Kabul in 1818, but he held Herat until he died in 1829.
After many invasions by both Britain and Russia, the two countries finally reached agreements that were drawn up in 1891 and 1895-96 to fix the present northern frontiers of Afghanistan. The Durand Line, agreed in 1893, delineated the boundary between Afghanistan and British India, effectively cutting the Pashtun population in half. The British forces left Afghanistan in 1880, and Abd al-Rahman managed to bring the whole country under his rule. He had succeeded in maintaining the independence and territorial integrity of the country. On his death in 1901, his son Habibullah exercised undisputed authority over the whole country. However, in 1905, he confirmed the treaty signed by his father with the government of British India, securing for the latter control of the foreign relations of Afghanistan. Habibullah Khan was shot in 1919. His brother Nasrullah proclaimed himself his successor but was captured by the late Amir’s third son, Amanullah, who enjoyed the support of the army.
The contemporary history of Afghanistan starts with the reign of Amanullah Khan (1919-1929), who tried to modernise his country and impose Western-style reforms. As a result of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in August 1919, the independence of Afghanistan was formally recognised by British India. In 1922, a constitution was promulgated at a Loe Jirga (a type of tribal assembly), followed in 1923 by an administrative code, and in 1924 by measures to provide for higher education for girls. After the outbreak of a rebellion in Khost, led by Mulla Abd al-Karim, the provision for the education of women was cancelled.
However, on returning from a tour through India, Europe, the USSR, Turkey and Iran (Dec. 1927 to July 1928), King Amanullah summoned a third Loe Jirga to promulgate a new constitution, and to announce a programme of social and education reforms. Following in the footsteps of Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran, Amanullah placed a strong emphasis on education and the emancipation of women. He opened girls’ schools and forbade government officials from practising polygamy. He appeared with his wife unveiled and encouraged other women to discard the veil and the burqa. It was too much too soon.
The mullahs declared the king an infidel, and fundamentalists from the countryside descended triumphantly on Kabul to chase him away. A Tajik commander, Bach-e-Saqqao, later named Habibullah Khan, advanced towards Kabul. He again re-instituted Shari’a law, dissolved the Education and Justice Ministries and gave responsibility for the education and legal systems to the Ulema. In this way, Afghanistan’s first attempt at modernisation came to an abrupt end. Today, we are seeing the death of the second attempt and the re-imposition of a very fanatical and militant Islam over the population.
Habibullah Khan only lasted for a few months in power and was replaced by the third cousin of Amanullah, Muhammad Nadir Khan, in October 1929. The tribal leadership of the Pashtuns could not tolerate the idea of a Tajik ruling over them. They came to an agreement with the mullahs to replace him with Nadir Khan, who was a Pashtun. This was a clear precedent for the recent opposition by all the Pashtun Mujahedin groups to Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Masood, who were Tajik.
When Nader Khan was assassinated in November 1933, his son Zahir Shah became king. Under him, the religious establishment remained powerful. In 1944, a School for Instruction in the Shari’a was set up, which developed into the Faculty of Theology at Kabul University in 1950. In his social and political policies, Zahir Shah followed a very conservative path and remained very close to the mullahs. Many of the religious leaders of Afghanistan were influenced by the thinking of the Pakistani Islamic theorist Abdul Ala Maududi, who in 1941 had established the Jamaat-e Islami Party, which is still very strong in Pakistan. Maududi’s fundamentalist influence can clearly be seen in much of what the Taliban stand for.
In July 1973, when Zahir Shah was out of the country, he was ousted in a bloodless coup by his cousin and prime minister, Mohammad Daoud. Daoud again tried to start a policy of reform and modernisation. He also changed the direction of Afghanistan’s foreign policy by adopting a much more independent stance towards the Soviet Union, which had been very close to the previous regime and had made some investment in Afghanistan. The Soviets were worried that Afghanistan might join the CENTO alliance with Iran and Turkey and that Afghanistan would become another link in the chain of the military encirclement of the Soviet territory. Therefore, they began to support pro-Moscow communist parties that were opposed to the Islamist groups.
Pakistan’s Involvement in Afghanistan
During Daoud’s five-year rule, a large number of conservative Muslims left the country for Pakistan. The trickle of people fleeing to Pakistan turned into a flood when President Daoud was killed in a coup organised by the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The leaders of the Islamist parties who had fled to Pakistan in the mid-1970s were welcomed by the then-president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He is said to have seen them as potentially strengthening his hand in relation to the highly sensitive issue of Pashtunistan, on which President Daoud of Afghanistan took an aggressive line. Bhutto permitted the parties to establish offices in Peshawar. Following the hanging of Bhutto by the new military president of Pakistan, General Zia al-Haq, the Islamist parties in Pakistan found a leader whose ideological aspirations for Pakistan were very much in line with their own thinking and with the thinking of militant Islamist parties in Pakistan, such as the Jamaat-i-Islami. Zia had a clear ambition to establish in Kabul a government over which Pakistan could exercise control and to create strategic strength against India.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a unique opportunity for Zia to implement his plan. Now, he also had the USA and Saudi Arabia as his allies. The decision of the USA to provide massive military and economic assistance to the Mujahedin, using Pakistan as a conduit, made it possible for the Islamist groups and for Pakistan to move from a position of weakness to one in which they served as a major channel for arms and resources to the Mujahedin fighting inside Afghanistan. Most of the assistance to the Mujahedin was channelled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is largely autonomous. In Pakistan, like in Turkey, the army is very powerful and politically active. For 35 years out of its 50-year history, Pakistan has been ruled directly by the army. It has been alleged that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s brothers, Mortaza, who was gunned down in Islamabad in 1996 with his bodyguards, and Zolfeqar, who was poisoned in mysterious circumstances in Paris, were both killed by the Inter-Services Intelligence.
Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, who headed Pakistan’s ISI directorate for many years during the Afghan conflict, was himself a radical Muslim with a mission of his own. He openly advocated that Pakistan should fulfil the requirements of Article 2-A of Pakistan’s constitution as defined in the Objectives Resolution, namely that “sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone, and the authority [is] to be exercised by the people of Pakistan within the limits prescribed by Him.”[14] In other words, he did not recognise any borders in the mission to extend Allah’s authority to the world, especially in the neighbouring countries. One should remember that Pakistan is the only country that came into being as an Islamic country and is run based on an Islamic constitution.
Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul also advocated major changes in Pakistan itself in order to bring it more into line with the requirements of the Shari’a. In an interview, after he was dismissed from his post, Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul was asked what kind of change he was thinking of. He replied: “We believe in a structural revolution, but if we do not establish the primacy of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, then I am afraid there would be an upheaval.”[15]
During the anti-Soviet jihad, Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, as the head of the ISI, was in charge of organising and overseeing the operations by the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. In the above-mentioned interview, he claimed that during the days of the Afghan jihad, he personally used to disburse more than 500 million rupees (over $200m in those days) in a month. This is no idle boast. It is estimated that between 1980 and 1991, Washington and Riyadh contributed a total of $40bn, split evenly, towards the Mujahedin war against the Soviet Union. It is alleged that not all the money and weaponry, including anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, went to the Mujahedin. In any case, Pakistan did very well as a result of the conflict. When the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, Pakistan had a huge army of militant Muslims at its disposal. Most of them had been armed and financed by ISI and were beholden to it. While roughly the same number of refugees went to Iran as they did to Pakistan, in Iran, they were by and large integrated into the society, and, of course, there was no American support for them. In the case of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan, on the other hand, they were trained by the Pakistani army and sent to battle against the infidels.
During the war, numerous parties and factions came into existence and asked for military and financial support. By the end of 1980 Pakistani government responded that it would recognise only seven of the many parties, and that all those seeking military hardware would have to affiliate themselves with one or more of these. Four of these so-called Mujahedin parties were militant Islamists, in that they sought to create a political movement with an ideological basis that drew on Islam. The other three, which were more moderate, were referred to as traditionalists in that they emerged from traditional tribal or other groupings.
The parties and their leadership were as follows:
1- Jamiat-e Islami (Islamic Group), formed in 1972 out of an informal grouping, was the first of the Islamist parties to be established in Kabul. Its leader, Burhannudin Rabbani, was a lecturer in Islamic theology at Kabul University. Rabbani took the view that in seeking to promote Islamic direction, the party should proceed cautiously and with respect for existing beliefs and practices. As an ethnic Tajik, Rabbani has been identified geographically with north-eastern Afghanistan. Another key member of Jamiat-e Islami is Ahmad Shah Masood, who joined the group while an engineering student at Kabul University.
2- Jibha-ye Nijat-e Melli (National Salvation Front) was established by Sibghatullah Mujadidi in 1980, and is one of the three parties referred to as traditionalist by virtue of the absence of Islamist ideology and its power base within the rural society of Afghanistan. Mujadidi, a relatively moderate, was a strong advocate for the return of King Zahir Shah.
3- Mahaz-e Melli-e Islami (National Islamic Front) is headed by Pir Gailani, a religious leader connected with the Sufi movement and with an inherited spiritual status, who has a strong following among the Pashtun tribes of southern Afghanistan. Pir Gailani, related to former king Zahir Shah by marriage, is a moderate and liberal man who has represented the views of the educated professional classes to a greater extent than the other Mujahedin.
4- Hizb-e Islami (Islamic Party), led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is from Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. He is an ethnic Pashtun. He was much more of a purist and fundamentalist than Rabbani and sought to eradicate the existing customs, practices and structures.
5-Ittihad-e-Islami (Islamic Unity) was formed by Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf, a former theology lecturer from Kabul University and a fluent Arabic speaker. He, too, is very close to Saudi Wahhabi ideology and demonstrated strong opposition to the Shi’a minority in Afghanistan, echoing Riyadh’s competition with Tehran within Afghanistan and the Islamic world.
6- Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami (Islamic Revolution Movement) emerged in 1980, under the leadership of Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi, an Islamic scholar. The party’s power base lies amongst the Ulema and village mullahs, and it is the closest in its beliefs to the Taliban.
7-Hizb-e Islami (Khalis) (Islamic Party, led by Mawlawi Yunis Khalis) emerged as a splinter movement from Hizb-e Islami in 1979 after Yunis Khalis, a tribal leader from Paktia Province with very radical, pro-Saudi and pro-Wahhabi leanings, opted to pursue his own direction. Khalis was trained in Islamic theology at the Deoband School, which is one of the most militant Islamic groups. The Taliban leader, Mulla Omar, is said to have aligned himself with Hizb-e Islami (Khalis) during the period of resistance.
Iranian Involvement in Afghanistan
Although there were as many Afghan refugees in Iran as there were in Pakistan, and although the developments in Afghanistan affected Iran as much as they affected Pakistan, Iran’s role in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan was relatively minor. For one thing, from 1980 to 1988, Iran was involved in the war with Iraq, which required all its attention and resources. Secondly, contrary to Pakistan, Iran did not have an axe to grind in Afghanistan, as it had no territorial ambitions there, nor did it have any major problem with the Afghans residing in Iran. Thirdly, contrary to Pakistan, which had been chosen by the United States as its main conduit of assistance to the Mujahedin fighters that were fighting against the Soviet occupation, Iran was the target of American hostility and suspicion, and in the 1990s, it suffered from American sanctions and the Dual Containment Policy. Fourthly, due to its tense relations with the West, it did not wish to antagonise the Soviet Union too much, as it needed Soviet support in its efforts to protect itself against the West. Therefore, its role in Afghanistan was relatively minor and benign compared to that of Pakistan.
Nevertheless, Iran was anxious initially to reverse the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As a self-proclaimed supporter of Muslims and Islamic causes, it wished to help the Muslim fighters against communist ideology. At the same time, in later years, it did not wish to see Afghanistan turned into a Pakistani colony or a US base for operations against Iran. Iran was also anxious to help the Shi’a minority in Afghanistan and to prevent them from being crushed by the predominantly Sunni majority. Therefore, it tried to organise the Shi’a groups into parties in line with the Sunni groups that received the support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
The seven parties, which formed themselves into the Seven Party Alliance in May 1985, were all adherents of Sunni Islam and all but one, Jamiat, were Pashtun. The first Shi’a resistance organisation was the traditionalist Shura-ye Ittifiaq (Unity Council), which brought together intellectuals, landlords, the clergy and ordinary people from the Hazarajat region of Central Afghanistan. This organisation was later weakened by attacks from radical groups supported by different Iranian factions. In addition, there were two other Shi’a parties. The larger of the two, Hizb-e Vahdat (Unity Party), was formed with the encouragement of the Iranian government to bring various Afghan parties based in Iran under one umbrella and so to strengthen the power of the Shi’is in Afghanistan. Hizb-e Vahdat took control of the Hazarajat area of central Afghanistan in 1987, under the leadership of Abdul Ali Mazari.
In 1988, Iran united eight Shi’a parties into Hizb-e Vahdat. In 1993, Vahdat split into factions allied with Jamiat and Hizb. The other Shi’i party, Harakat-e Islami (Islamic Movement), was led by Sheikh Assef Muhsini, whose following has been among urban educated Shi’is.[16] Muhsini often played a role as a mediator between various major players. Due to factional alignments, in February 1995 offensive Ahmad Shah Masood crushed the Shi’a forces in Kabul. In 1996, Iran announced it had reunited the two factions and reconciled them with President Rabbani.
In its dealings with Afghanistan, Iran made a major mistake. Instead of supporting the central government against the more radical elements, it threw its weight behind the Shi’is who constitute less than 20 per cent of the population. There were three lines of thought among Iranian politicians. The hard-line mullahs, supported by the then foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, were keen to support their fellow Shi’is. On the other hand, many other influential Iranian politicians and scholars pointed out the stupidity of this approach and advocated that Iran should support the central government led by Burhannudin Rabbani. A few isolated voices maintained that there was no way that Iran could have a major impact on the events in Afghanistan and that Iran should play the role of the mediator among all the factions and should even start a dialogue with the Taliban.
The Post-Soviet Situation
After the end of the war, each of these different Mujahedin groups wanted their share of the booty. The last Soviet soldiers left in April 1989, Najibullah became president and started talking favourably of Islam. Had the West allowed or encouraged Najibullah to stay in power, that would have probably provided the best solution for a war-torn Afghanistan, because there still existed a semblance of a central government, the capital Kabul had remained mainly intact, and a more moderate form of Islam that was in keeping with the history of Afghanistan would have replaced the former Soviet rule. However, Pakistan’s intent on getting rid of the last remnant of the communist rule in Afghanistan and trying to bring to power a client group that would do its bidding pushed for the replacement of the Najibullah government with one led by the Mujahedin and eventually by the Taliban.
The Mujahedin Consultative Council elected the moderate leader, Sibghatullah Mojadidi, the leader of the Afghan National Salvation Front, as president, and hard-liner Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf as prime minister. After the fall of Najibullah in April 1992, he was given refuge in the UN compound in Kabul, and he was replaced by the scholarly Burhanuddin Rabbani as the head of the state. However, as it always happens in revolutionary situations, the moderates soon lost out to the more radical and fanatical elements. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that Rabbani was the only Tajik among the Mujahedin leaders and also showed some independence from Pakistan.
Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia favoured the more militant Pashtun leaders, Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf. Soon disagreements led to armed conflict, and Kabul, which had remained relatively unscathed during the Russian occupation, became a battlefield between various Muslim factions. The forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Sayyaf began the shelling of the city and reduced it to rubble. In one major rocket attack on Kabul in August 1992 by Sayyaf’s forces, more than 1,800 civilians were killed, and a large number fled to Mazar-e Sharif. Hekmatyar, after organising a bloody siege of Kabul in 1994, eventually rallied to the regime there, reconciling himself to his historic enemies of the Jamiat Islami party, Ahmad Shah Masood and Burhanuddin Rabbani.
But by this time, the West and Pakistan had given up any hope of the Mujahedin being able to create a united government, and the plans for the creation of the Taliban had been formed. After the initial successes of the Taliban, the Mujahedin groups continued fighting each other. It was not until October 1996, after Kabul had fallen to the Taliban, that Abdur-Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Masood and former government leaders, President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, began to make common cause against the Taliban. But by this time, they were confined to Panjshir Valley and the north of the country.
The Rise of the Taliban
Pakistan, which had lost patience with the Mujahedin and which wanted a more compliant government in Afghanistan which would facilitate its plans for the transfer of oil and gas from Central Asia through Afghanistan, formed the Taliban, mainly from the Pashtun tribes resident in Pakistan. Pakistan’s ISI armed them, trained them and provided them with military and logistical support and, on occasions, with direct military involvement on their behalf. Some sources have claimed that as many as half of all the fighters who were fighting under the banner of the Taliban were members of the Pakistani regular forces.
In October 1994, Pakistani Interior Minister General Naseerullah Babar, trying to show that Pakistan was a potential outlet for Central Asian trade and the export of its gas and oil deposits, made a highly publicised trip across Afghanistan, via Kandahar and Heart, and then organised a trade convoy to cover the same route. This convoy was protected by the newly emerged Taliban that Pakistan had helped to organise. In February 1995, Taliban forces reached Kabul but were repelled. In October, they were back again, and intensive fighting and bombing of Kabul went on. On 5 September 1995, the Taliban took the Persian-speaking and Tajik-inhabited Herat, close to the Iranian border. Ismail Khan, who had been allied to the government, had taken Herat Province in April 1992, when the Soviet-backed government had fallen. Ismail Khan gradually increased his dominion over the Western provinces of Farah and Nimroz to the south, and Baghdis to the northwest. Over 20,000 people fled Herat after the city fell to the Taliban.
After conquering large areas of the country, the Taliban eventually took Kabul on 27th September 1996. As soon as they reached Kabul, they dragged former President Najibullah and his brother Shahpur Ahmadzai from the UN headquarters and hanged them in public view without any trial. Some 50,000 people fled Kabul after the city fell to the Taliban. Three days before the fall of Kabul, a Taliban aircraft was hijacked by its own crew and flown to a government airfield. The pilot allegedly said that he was defecting to draw attention to Pakistan’s involvement in Afghan affairs. Seven Pakistani officers were on the aircraft. They were captured by the government in Kabul and were put on public view in front of the international media.
The Taliban declared that Afghanistan was a ‘completely Islamic state.’ They called it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They forced women to wear a Burqa, closed all girls’ schools, prevented women from receiving treatment in hospitals, banned female employment outside their homes, banned television, forced men to grow beards and to have short haircuts, and enforced strict “Islamic” law. The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced: “Since the Prophet, Muhammad, peace be upon him, did not trim his beard all his life, therefore all government employees are hereby informed that they should grow their beards within a month and a half, in accordance with the noble Hadith and the Prophet, in order to be regarded as a true Muslim.”[17]
In the following weeks, the Taliban conquered over two-thirds of Afghanistan but were still facing stiff resistance from Ahmad Shah Masood’s Tajik forces in Panjshir Valley and Rashid Dostum’s Uzbek forces in the north of the country. On 2nd October 1996, one of the most radical Islamic parties in Pakistan, Jamiat-al-Ulema al-Islami, which is headed by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, announced that it had prepared a draft constitution for Afghanistan at the request of the Taliban.
The triumphs of the Taliban alarmed many neighbouring countries. On 2nd October 1996, President Boris Yeltsin called for a summit meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). His national security adviser said that the victory of the Taliban posed a serious threat to the Central Asian Republics because, he said, it wanted to annex parts of them. It was announced that the presidents of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and the Russian prime minister, would meet in Almaty. Only Turkmenistan did not take part in the meeting. President Niyazov said, “We do not quite share the results of the Almaty summit. We believe the conflict in Afghanistan is an Afghan domestic affair.”
The American oil company, UNOCOL, in a statement issued on the same day, said that it regarded the Taliban’s new dominance in Afghanistan as a ‘positive development.’ It argued that a single government there would bring stability and improve the prospects of proceeding with plans to build oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan. The US government was also reported as saying that it saw nothing objectionable in what the Taliban had done and that it would seek a meeting with the Taliban. However, on 8th October, the State Department issued a statement in which it warned the Taliban administration that recognition would be contingent on the rights of women being respected.
On 12 October, the charge d’affaires at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kabul passed on the congratulations of the Saudi king, and expressed delight at the enforcement of the sacred Muhammadan law in Afghanistan and the peace and security which had been restored in most parts of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
In contrast, Iran was vociferous in its criticism of the Taliban. On 7 October, Iran’s Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, in a Friday sermon, said: “In the neighbourhood of Iran, something is taking place in the name of Islam, and a group whose knowledge of Islam is unknown has embarked on actions having nothing to do with Islam.”[18] Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, toured Central Asia and India to stress the need for a cease-fire and a broad-based government.
Meanwhile, on 17 October 1996, the UN Security Council issued a resolution in which it expressed concern at what it described as extreme discrimination against women and urged strict adherence to the norms of international law. On 24 October, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in which it called on all states to oppose the Taliban administration in Kabul because of what it called systematic discrimination against Afghan women, the numerous violations of human rights and the forcible indoctrination of the Afghan people.
At the end of May 1997, the Uzbek Commander Malik turned against his boss Rashid Dostum, for allegedly having killed his brother, and defected to the Taliban. Dostum fled to Turkey, and the Taliban forces entered Mazar-e Sharif on 24th May. On the same day, Pakistan recognised the new Taliban government, to be joined later by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. However, as Taliban forces were trying to disarm the forces of Malik and of the Islamic Vahdat party, their forces, who had refused to be disarmed, turned against the Taliban, killed many hundreds and took some 700, including the foreign minister of the Taliban and the commander of northern Afghanistan, hostage. A mass grave was discovered in November 1997 containing some 2,000 bodies, presumably belonging to Taliban fighters.
Pakistan tried to mediate between the Taliban and the forces of Malik, promising that Malik could have full autonomy in the north, and his forces and those of the Shi’ites would not be disarmed. This would have been the first time that the Taliban had agreed to share power in Afghanistan. The conflict, however, still continued with no end in sight. In September 1997, Dostum returned to Afghanistan and joined another coalition against the Taliban.
Meanwhile, in July 1997, an agreement was reached between UNOCOL, Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani and Turkmen governments, which provided for the construction of a gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan to Pakistan, through Afghanistan, to commence at the end of 1998. UNOCOL, however, commented that it would not start the construction work until there was an internationally recognised government in full control of Afghanistan.
On 25 October 1997, President Saparmurad Niyazov of Turkmenistan announced the signing of a 2bn dollar protocol between his government and CentGas, a consortium of seven companies led by UNOCAL (owner of 54.11 percent of CentGas), for the construction of a 1,400km pipeline from Dawlatabad, Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan to Multan, Pakistan, to carry 20 billion cubic metres of gas annually. In the spring of 1997, UNOCAL opened an office in Kandahar, the bastion of the Taliban movement. Dawlatabad gas field is estimated to be able to produce 15 billion cubic feet of gas per year for 30 years.
Iran organised a conference of all Afghan factions in Isfahan from 1-3 December 1997, to try to find a peaceful settlement of the conflict. All opposition factions and representatives of the former Afghan government took part, but the Taliban stayed away. Later, Pakistan arranged meetings between the representatives of the Taliban, Iran and Pakistan. After the first meeting, Taliban representatives boycotted the meetings.
Fourteen months after their setback in Mazar-e Sharif, Taliban forces captured Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province, on 2nd August 1998, and Mazar-e Sharif on the 8th. This gave the Taliban control of nearly 85 per cent of Afghanistan. The Uzbek leader, General Abdur-Rashid Dostum, and President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the nominal president and leader of the Jonbesh-e Melli-e Eslami-e Afghanistan (The National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan), fled. Dostum claimed that 12 Pakistani aircraft and some 1,500 Pakistani commandos had participated in the fall of his military base in his hometown of Sheberghan on 31 July.[19]
After capturing Mazar-e Sharif, Taliban forces carried out a massacre of the local population in revenge for the reverses that they had suffered the previous year. On 3 September 1998, Amnesty International reported that the massacre had been sustained and deliberate. Amnesty said it had evidence that a large number of those killed were from the minority group, the Hazaras. “Taliban guards deliberately and systematically killed thousands of ethnic Hazara civilians during the first three days following their military takeover of Mazar-i-Sharif on 8 August 1998,” it said, quoting what it called “new information” received by the group. Amnesty International said its report on the massacre was based on “testimonies from eyewitnesses and surviving members of the victims’ families”.[20] They were quoted as saying that Taliban troops killed Shi’ites in their homes, on the streets and in areas surrounding the city. They said many of those killed were women, children and the elderly who were allegedly shot as they tried to flee the city. Thousands more had been arrested.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry stated that the Taliban movement had deported about fifty thousand people from the territory it had captured in the north earlier in the month. A foreign ministry official in Ankara said that the Taliban were forcing tens of thousands of Uzbeks, Turkmen and Tajiks to leave their homes in the recently captured territory in the north of the country. The Turkish minister responsible for Central Asia, Ahat Andican, told the BBC in an interview on 21 August 1998 that the purpose of the Taliban was to create a new state in Afghanistan dominated by one ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
The Taliban also attacked the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e Sharif and killed eight Iranian consulate officials and a journalist. They also captured a few dozen Iranian truck drivers. This caused great tension in relations between Iran and the Taliban, as well as between Iran and Pakistan. Pakistan’s intelligence services, which had long-standing relations with the CIA, were further encouraged in their support for the Taliban when the CIA was tasked by the US Congress to spend $20 million to destabilise the Islamic Republic of Iran. Therefore, behind the Taliban’s successes, Iran saw the hands of Pakistan and the United States. Although Iran had scaled down its involvement in Afghanistan after the murder of its diplomats, it sharply escalated its aid to Masood and Rabbani.
The capture and murder of Iranian diplomats by the Taliban created a very tense situation between the two countries. The Taliban massed some 11,000 troops in areas bordering Iran shortly after seizing and murdering Iranian diplomats. According to this report, 6,000 Taliban troops were deployed in the Afghan Governorate of Nimroz, which borders the Iranian area of Zabol, and a further 5,000 were deployed in Farah Governorate, near the Birjand area.[21] Iran, too, put its forces on alert. About 70,000 Islamic Revolution Guards staged military exercises close to the Afghan border. On 19th October, the Taliban released 25 Iranian prisoners, and both Iranian and Taliban sources said that they were prepared to hold direct talks in order to resolve their differences.
Alarmed by the latest developments in northern Afghanistan, Tajik and Russian forces also conducted military exercises on the Tajik-Afghan border. Tajik President Emomali Rahmanov observed the joint tactical exercises. Meanwhile, two Russian border guards were killed in a gun battle with an unidentified armed group on the Tajik border with Afghanistan.
On Russia’s initiative, on 28th August, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution No. 1193 on Afghanistan. The USA, Great Britain, France, Japan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, India, Iran and Turkey took part in drafting the resolution. The resolution adopted by the UN Security Council gave clear guidelines in light of the latest events in that country. The large-scale military actions mounted by the Taliban movement were seen as a serious threat to regional and international peace, while its military achievements were connected with foreign intervention in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, including the sending of foreign military personnel. Although the document made no mention of any specific country, it is clear that it implies Pakistan. The UN Security Council resolution demanded an end to human rights violations, to discrimination against girls and women, the provision of refuge for terrorists and to activities linked to drug trafficking.[22]
The Tajik Commander, Ahmad Shah Masood, was still holding out in the Panjshir Valley, and Hezb-e Vahdat-e Eslami, composed mainly of the Hazaras, were continuing their struggle in the Bamian region. Following a meeting between the chief of the Russian general staff, General Anatoly Kvashnin, and Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Pastukhov with their Uzbek counterparts in Tashkent, a joint communiqué expressed “deep concern” at the escalation of fighting in Afghanistan and demanded that the Taliban stop their armed activity “immediately.”[23] A Russian foreign ministry spokesman, meanwhile, said that Pakistan had been directly involved in the fighting in Afghanistan and in supplying military equipment to the Taliban.
On 10 September, Taliban officials confirmed that nine Iranian diplomats at the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e Sharif had been killed by Taliban forces without authorisation and that their bodies would be returned to Iran. The United Nations Security Council condemned the killing of nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e Sharif. A statement called for an urgent investigation into the deaths, which it called a violation of international law. After the news of the death of the Iranian diplomats was announced, Iran announced that it was sending two hundred thousand additional troops to the border with Afghanistan, in what the Iranian army described as its biggest-ever troop exercise. United States intelligence officials said they believed Iran was planning an incursion into Afghan territory.
The American Involvement in Afghanistan
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fear of the further expansion of Soviet power to the Persian Gulf region, the United States tried to reverse the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As we have already seen, the United States chose Pakistan as a conduit for its funds and military hardware to enable the Afghans to defeat the Soviet forces. This made the United States a major, albeit an indirect, partner in the affairs of Afghanistan. However, not wishing to get directly involved in the conflict, it allowed Pakistan to act as its proxy. This form of mutual dependency between Pakistan and the United States ensured the defeat and withdrawal of Russian forces from Afghanistan, but it also gave the initiative to Pakistan and especially to Pakistan’s intelligence establishment to conduct the war as it saw fit.
After the defeat of the Soviet forces at the hands of the Mujahedin, the UN Secretary General used his good offices to mediate the Geneva Accords, signed on 14 April 1988, as a result of which Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan by 15 February 1989. These accords made provision for an interim agreement and for the termination of all assistance to the Pakistani-based Mujahedin, but the US claimed the right to continue the provision of aid to those parties, as the Soviet Union continued to support its client, President Najibullah. The collapse of the Soviet Union created a vacuum in Afghanistan, and President Najibullah found himself abandoned by his former patron. This led to the collapse of Najibullah’s government (May 1992), but the US and Pakistani assistance to the Mujahedin continued. With continuing disunity among the Mujahedin, the Taliban replaced the Mujahedin in Pakistani and American affection.
The Central Intelligence Agency had used the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence as its main conduit for sending tons of arms, including Stinger missiles, to the Mujahedin in the days of the anti-Soviet campaign. With the signing of oil and gas deals between the Taliban and US companies for the transfer of oil and gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan, the United States also became a firm supporter of the Taliban. A number of leading Taliban officials were lavishly entertained by UNOCAL in Texas. The Central Asia Gas (CentGas) consortium planned to build a pipeline from the Turkmen Dauletabad gas field to the Pakistani town of Multan.
Washington developed close contacts with the Taliban. In May 1996, two senior Taliban leaders attended a conference in Washington run by Senator Hank Brown, who had long maintained an interest in the region. US diplomats regularly travelled to Taliban headquarters. Only one week before the final assault on Kabul, Robin Raphel, the assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs, had a meeting with the leaders of the Taliban movement. Such visits can be explained by any government’s need for contact with opposition groups, but the timing raises doubts, as does the generally approving line that US officials used to take about the Taliban.
John Holtzman, the deputy chief of mission in Islamabad, told reporters that the Taliban could play a useful role in ending Afghanistan’s long civil war by providing a strong central government. Astonishingly, according to reports in many Western newspapers, Holtzman was planning to fly to Kabul shortly after the Taliban took over. The head of protocol had already gone to Kabul airport to meet him when the Clinton administration realised that an image of getting too friendly with ultra-fundamentalist Taliban could be a disaster with American women voters. The visit was postponed.[24] In fact, American women’s organisations have been among the most consistent opponents of the Taliban due to their medieval and harsh treatment of women.
On 17th April 1998, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Kabul at the head of a delegation, including the US ambassador in Pakistan, and met with the chairman of the Caretaker Council, Alhaj Mola Mohammad Rabbani. Richardson was quoted by the Taliban’s Bakhtar Information Agency as saying: “The US considers Afghanistan as its friend and respects Islam and Islamic values and wants to have close relations with Islam. The US completely defends peace, the independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan and wants to resolve all issues related to America peacefully, and the US has never spared any efforts in this.”[25]
Even after Pakistan tested its nuclear device, the US support for Pakistan and Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan have continued. According to some reports, Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Shamshad Ahmad Khan, and the US deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbot, had a round of meetings in London in July 1998. Nawaz Sharif’s brother and chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, also spent a week in Washington in July 1998. Strobe Talbot had been designated by the president and the secretary of state to hold a series of dialogues with the governments of India and Pakistan. The USA has apparently promised to intercede with the IMF to extend some fresh loans of some $3bn to Pakistan to encourage Pakistan not to carry out any more tests and to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Talbot was having similar meetings with the Indian prime minister’s special envoy, Jaswant Singh, a former army officer and defence minister.
On 3 September 1998, shortly after the Taliban massacre at Mazar-e Sharif, a US telecommunications company, Telephone System International (TSI), signed a $240 million agreement with the Taliban to install a communication network across the country. Meanwhile, on 8th September, the United States expressed serious concern over the build-up of Iranian forces on Afghanistan’s borders and urged Tehran against military action. State Department Spokesman James Rubin said that Iran had deployed “significant numbers of troops and equipment” on its borders with Afghanistan. “So clearly, this is a matter of serious concern, and it’s something we’re watching extremely closely,” he said. While stressing that holding diplomats “for any reason or at any time” was unacceptable under international law, he made it clear, “We do not support any interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.”[26]
The initial American support for the Taliban had been motivated by several factors:
(1) To help its ally Pakistan, with which she had very close collaboration during the anti-Soviet campaign.
(2) To contain Iran and to put pressure on the Iranian government by supporting an extremist Sunni group that had demonstrated its extreme hostility towards the Shi’is. From the early stages of the Afghan war of resistance, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia tried to introduce into Afghanistan the puritanical and militant sect of Wahhabism, alongside Hanafism and Shi’ism. The Taliban receive their inspiration from the staunchly anti-Shi’a Wahhabi sect and Sepah-e Sahabe group that have been involved in many bloody clashes with the Shi’is in Pakistan.
(3) To export oil and gas from Central Asia, particularly from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean.
However, the friendly relations between Washington and the Taliban did not last long. Following the explosions at the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States fired several cruise missiles at the suspected guerrilla camps of the Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, near the towns of Khost and Jalalabad, close to the Pakistani border. It was reported that 15 people were killed in one of his training camps. Seven others were allegedly killed in two other camps belonging to Pakistani groups, Harakat al-Ansar and Harakat al-Mujahidin.
During the anti-Soviet jihad, some 30,000 Muslim volunteers (half of them Arabs) had joined the fighting. Osama Bin Laden, who attracted 4,000 volunteers from Saudi Arabia, became the nominal leader of the “Arab Afghans.” In that capacity, he developed cordial relations with the leaders of the more radical Mujahedin, including Mullah Muhammad Omar, of the Hizb-e Islami (Khalis group), who later emerged as the Taliban leader. Bin Laden has also been accused of having been involved in the bomb explosion at the National Guards’ premises in Riyadh in November 1995, killing five US officers and in the truck bombing on 25 June 1996 near the Dhahran air base, which killed 19 US troops and injured over 400. He is accused of masterminding the explosions in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed more than 250 people, including 12 Americans, and injured 5,000 people.
After the American cruise attacks, the Taliban announced that Osama Bin Laden remained safe and vowed never to turn him over to the United States.[27] The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, rebuffed an American approach for talks. He was quoted as saying: “If the United States wants to restore its esteem, it should remove President Clinton from his post and withdraw its forces from the Gulf.”[28] Pakistan also denounced US air strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan as a violation of the territorial integrity of the two Islamic countries. “The government of Pakistan expresses indignation at the U.S. strikes at Afghanistan and Sudan,” Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz told the Senate (upper house of parliament) after government and opposition speakers had blasted the American action. “Irrespective of the motives of these strikes, the act of violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of these Islamic countries cannot but be a matter of grave concern to the people of Pakistan who justifiably feel outraged,” Aziz said.[29]
Possible dangers of a total Taliban victory
If the Taliban succeed in conquering the whole country and enforcing their version of extreme Islamic fundamentalism, it will have serious repercussions in Afghanistan and in the entire region. Some of the possible dangers associated with the victory of the Taliban could include the following:
The Taliban may bring about some order and security at the cost of huge repression and human misery. The order that they wish to establish can only be imposed by massive force and the violation of the human rights of the citizens. There are already many signs of disaffection not only among the non-Pashtun groups, but even some of the Pashtun forces allied with the Taliban have grown weary of their brand of strict Islamic practices.
The implementation of strict Islamic rule will be a disaster for the more educated and more progressive elements in Afghanistan, especially for women. With the imposition of the medieval mentality of the Taliban, the cause of development and modernisation that Afghanistan badly needs will be set back for decades. That form of militant and puritanical version of Islam will also adversely affect Afghanistan’s neighbours and will encourage the development of a more reactionary interpretation of Islam.
The Taliban is turning Afghanistan into a virtual Pakistani colony. Ever since the emergence of the Taliban, Pakistan has had a very visible presence in Afghanistan, and the borders between the two countries have virtually ceased to exist. Pakistan sees the Taliban as its mercenaries for exerting influence over Afghanistan. The Pakistani government is using the Taliban as its foot soldiers in its campaigns in Kashmir and as a lever of pressure against India. Even if the Taliban succeed in creating a sufficient degree of stability in the country to allow for the transfer of oil and gas through Afghanistan to Pakistan, the income from these sources will only enrich a few individuals and will not do much for the general economy of the country.
The domination of one ethnic group over all others will create permanent ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing reminiscent of former Yugoslavia. Apart from the massacre of the Uzbeks, the Hazaras and the Tajiks carried out after the conquest of Mazar-e Sharif, there have been more recent acts of atrocities against other ethnic groups during the latest Taliban move against the forces of Ahmad Shah Masood. The UN accused the Taliban Islamic militia on August 15th of burning down villages and crops to force thousands of people out of a newly captured northern territory. Troops attacking the opposition leader, Ahmad Shah Masoo,d forced families from the Shomali valley, north of Kabul. Kabul is already host to a population of 400,000 dependent on food handouts to survive. A further 150,000 civilians have fled north to the Panjshir Valley.[30]
It is unlikely that the Taliban will be able to pacify the whole of the country for long because, in time, other ethnic groups will reassert themselves and Afghanistan will see a long period of instability. The forceful submission of fifty per cent of the population to one faction, short of genocide, is not possible. It is unlikely that all the forces created by the Taliban will remain loyal to its leadership for long. Most Afghans have lived a life of conflict and independent struggle against the Soviets and each other for the past 20 years. It is unlikely that all of them will all of a sudden fall into line and do the bidding of the Taliban authorities.
The encouragement of Islamic fundamentalism by Pakistan and with the tacit approval of the West will backfire. Bin Laden is only one example of the dangers posed by Muslim militants in Afghanistan. Islamic militant groups will continue to thrive on their own. Even if Bin Laden is arrested or handed over, it will not put an end to the many terrorist cells that he has created, because they will continue their religious campaigns, and probably will resort to revenge attacks.[31]
The “Islamic jihad” will continue in Kashmir with the support of Taliban elements, with the possibility of major clashes between Pakistan and India. Some Pakistani religious and military leaders have already called for the intensification of the jihad in Kashmir with the help of the Taliban against India. In late 1997, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the Indian equivalent of the American CIA, estimated that some 800 to 1,000 foreign guerrillas, many veterans of the Afghan jihad, were giving fresh impetus to the Pakistani campaign to annex Kashmir. As late as September 1997, Indian troops had reported killing 302 mercenaries, including many Afghans. The Muslims in Kashmir said that the guest fighters were in Kashmir to participate in a holy war against India.[32]
The Taliban will pose a long-term danger to Pakistan itself. The triumph of the Taliban will encourage Islamic forces inside Pakistan to seek a more Islamic-oriented state. In the wake of the American missile attacks against Bin Laden’s bases, there were many calls for a Taliban-like government in Pakistan. There have been big demonstrations by militant Islamic groups against the Pakistani government, accusing it of weakness or collusion in the American attacks. Even Nawaz Sharif’s government submitted a bill in early September 1998 for the enforcement of the Shari’a as Pakistani law. In time, with the radicalisation of millions of Pashtuns living in Pakistan, opportunities will be created for the destabilisation of Pakistan itself. The North-West Frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan has never been officially recognised by Afghanistan. Many Afghans believe that the northern parts of Pakistan belong to them by right. With the militarisation and radicalisation of the Afghans resident in the North West Frontier Province, there will be every possibility for the annexation of that area by Afghanistan.
The Taliban will also inspire Islamist groups in Central Asia, and so any dream of trouble-free transfer of oil and gas from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan will prove illusory. The religious clashes in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will ensure that the Afghan border will not be very secure. The instability in Dagestan and Chechnya and the rest of the Caucasus will also affect the transfer of oil and gas both through Turkey and Russia. The conflict could drag Russia, Turkey and many Central Asian states into a protracted Islamic-inspired conflict.
The issue of the production and smuggling of drugs will become much more serious than before, with organised smuggling rings backing it. It will be a major source of revenue for the state and a much higher income for the farmers in a poverty-stricken country. Afghanistan is already the largest world producer of opium poppies from which heroin is processed. Production increased by 25 per cent during 1997 and a further 8 per cent in 1998. There has been a great increase in the amount of drugs smuggled from Afghanistan through Iran and Turkey to the West. There has also been an increase in attempts to smuggle drugs through Central Asia. On 17th August 1999, Russian border guards foiled two attempts by armed drug couriers to cross from Afghanistan into Tajikistan at sections guarded by the Moskovskiy border guard detachment. In the course of armed clashes, seven smugglers were killed and 13kg of drugs were seized.[33]
Conclusion
The rise of the Taliban, which came about as the result of cooperation between Pakistan and the West, both to establish Pakistani hegemony over Afghanistan and facilitate the transfer of oil and gas through Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean, has backfired. Instead of being a compliant force doing the Pakistani and Western bidding, the Taliban has become an independent and autonomous force, following its own fundamentalist agenda. Its record of humanitarian abuses has been quite disastrous, not only to Afghanistan’s neighbours as witnessed by the killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e Sharif, but mainly to the Afghan population itself.
The United States and the West cannot support such a system, with all its human rights violations. The pressure of women’s groups postponed the recognition of the Taliban by the American administration when Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE recognised the Taliban. However, there is other compelling evidence that should prevent America and the West generally from recognising the Taliban, not least due to the operation of various terrorist groups from Afghan territory.
The international community should not recognise the Taliban, because the recognition of this group is tantamount to legitimising foreign occupation through proxies — because that is what it is — as well as approving of the terrible atrocities committed by the Taliban. International recognition should be contingent on the establishment of a broad-based government, an end to extreme persecution of women, and the closing of terrorist camps. As Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Karl F. Inderfurth said before the Senate on April 14, 1999: “Only this kind of a government can bring to Afghanistan the peace it so sorely needs.”[34] There should be concerted pressure on the Taliban to moderate their stances, to hand over Bin Laden and to close down the terrorist network there. If this is done by the Taliban, it will be much less costly for the West than if it is done directly by the West through military action.[35]
There should be international inspections to prevent the production and export of drugs. It is estimated that Afghanistan produced up to one-half of the world’s opium in 1998. More than 63,000 hectares were farmed with poppy, yielding an estimated 2,100 metric tons of raw opium. Almost all opium poppy cultivation districts in Afghanistan are under the control of the Taliban.[36] In order to ensure an end to the production of drugs, Afghanistan needs massive international aid to rebuild its shattered economy. The Afghan struggle against the Soviet forces was one major factor in expediting the collapse of communism. The West owes it to the Afghans to establish peace and tranquillity and economic development in a country that did so much for the West and for the international community.
With sufficient vision, it might be possible to find a lasting solution to the problems of the region and solve the greater problems involving India and Pakistan, and the issue of the transfer of mineral resources from Central Asia. This overall solution can only be achieved through cooperation between the United States, Iran, Turkey, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia for the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan, representing all the ethnic groups with proportional representation for all. That is the only solution that will ensure the territorial integrity of Afghanistan, bring lasting peace and prevent the continuation of ethnic disputes.
It may also create a framework for friendly cooperation between Russia, Iran, the Central Asian countries and the West, with all of them benefiting from the oil and gas resources of Central Asia, without creating constant conflict there. There is no reason why there cannot be several routes linking Central Asia with the outside world, through Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Russia. This would create greater diversity and security for the future supply of oil and gas to the West and to the Sub-Continent, while giving all the states in the region a stake in the maintenance of regional security.
Meanwhile, the plight of the oppressed Afghan people needs urgent international attention. There is an urgent need for pressure on the Taliban to accept a cease-fire, to take part in serious negotiations for the formation of a representative government, and for the involvement of UN agencies to provide humanitarian aid to the millions of displaced and traumatised inhabitants of Afghanistan.
Appendix 1
The text of the declaration of the meeting of the Six-Plus-Two on Afghanistan, signed in Tashkent on 19th July 1999.
Text of report by the Uzbek newspaper ‘Narodnoye Slovo’
Tashkent Declaration on the Fundamental Principles of a Peaceful Settlement of the Conflict in Afghanistan
The deputy ministers of foreign affairs of the “six-plus-two” group, consisting of the states bordering on Afghanistan – the People’s Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan – as well as the Russian Federation and the United States of America, having met in [the Uzbek capital] Tashkent on 19th-20th July 1999 with the participation of Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, having considered the situation in Afghanistan, being sincere friends of the Afghan people and wishing peace and prosperity for Afghanistan, have affirmed the following principles.
We express the profound concern of our governments at the continuing military confrontation in Afghanistan, which is posing a serious and growing threat to regional and international peace and security.
We remain committed to a peaceful political settlement of the Afghan conflict, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations, and we, in particular, recall the “points for discussion” and the “issues on which general understanding have been achieved”, adopted earlier by the countries of the “six-plus-two” group.
We confirm that the United Nations, as a universally recognised mediator, must continue to play a central and impartial role in international efforts to achieve a peaceful solution to the Afghan conflict, and we confirm our full support for the efforts of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and the work of the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan.
We confirm our firm commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Afghanistan.
We express our profound concern about the violations of human rights, including those of ethnic minorities and women and girls, as well as the violations of international humanitarian law that are taking place in Afghanistan.
We are deeply worried about the steady increase in the cultivation, production and illicit trafficking of narcotics and the illegal sale of arms, which have far-reaching unfavourable consequences not only for the region but beyond it as well.
We are also concerned about the use of Afghan territory, especially areas controlled by the Taliban to conceal and train terrorists, and about the fact that the dangerous consequences of such actions can be seen in Afghanistan, in the neighbouring countries and far beyond its borders.
Following the aforementioned, we have come to the following conclusions:
1. We are convinced that there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict, and this must be settled through peaceful political negotiations to establish a multi-ethnic and fully representative government on a wide basis.
2. Accordingly, we urge the sides in Afghanistan to resume political negotiations aimed at achieving these goals.
3. to assist the cessation of hostilities, which we consider essential, we have further agreed not to provide military support to any Afghan side and to prevent the use of our territories for such purposes. We call upon the international community to take identical measures to prevent the delivery of weapons to Afghanistan.
4. We express our readiness to promote direct negotiations between the Afghan sides under the auspices of the United Nations in accordance with the relevant resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations and this Declaration in order to conclude an inter-Afghan agreement on the implementation of paragraph one mentioned above. As members of the “six-plus-two” group, we are fully determined to provide our individual and collective support to this process.
5. We think that the process of negotiations must be conducted under the auspices of the United Nations and may consist of two stages.
(a) The main purpose of the first stage is to adopt measures to reinforce mutual trust. These measures will include:
(i) The signing of an agreement on an immediate and unconditional cease-fire without any preconditions;
(ii) The holding of direct negotiations at this stage between the plenipotentiary delegations of the two main conflicting sides – the United Front [the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan] and the Taleban movement, including on:
– the exchange of POWs;
– lifting internal blockades and opening roads for reciprocal trade and the delivery of humanitarian aid in the territories controlled by various Afghan groups.
(b) The main purpose of the second stage is to draw up basic principles of the future state structure of Afghanistan by the Afghans themselves and to form, on a wide basis, a multi-ethnic and fully representative government within a short period of time.
6. Those of us who have common borders with Afghanistan, proceeding from a common desire to take effective and coordinated measures to combat illicit drug trafficking, have agreed, on a bilateral and multilateral basis, to step up effective and coordinated measures to combat illicit drug trafficking. In this connection, we recall and confirm the important role played by the United Nations Drug Control Program in this process.
7. We urge the Taleban movement to inform the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United Nations about the results of their investigations into the killings of the diplomatic and consular staff of the Consulate-General of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Mazar-e Sharif and of the correspondent of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] News Agency, and we call on the Taleban to cooperate fully with the international investigation into these killings to punish the guilty parties.
8. We urge the Afghan sides, particularly the Taliban movement, to cease providing shelter to international terrorists and their organisations and training them and to cooperate with the efforts to bring terrorists to justice.
9. We are fully determined to make every effort to encourage the Afghan parties to respect the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Afghan people in accordance with the basic norms of international law.
10. We are prepared to cooperate with the new Afghan government which will be established in accordance with the aforementioned paragraph one, in all aspects to strengthen security and stability in Afghanistan and in the region, of returning Afghan refugees back to their native places and ensuring the soonest rehabilitation and reconstruction of Afghanistan through support from UN agencies and programs, international financial organizations and donor countries.
11. We call upon the international community to respond to the inter-institutional appeal on joint actions on rendering Afghanistan emergency humanitarian aid and rehabilitation assistance for the period between 1st January and 31st December 1999, voiced by the [UN] Secretary-General, bearing in mind also the existence of the emergency targeted fund for Afghanistan. Support for demining is of particular importance.
12. We call upon the international community to support these proposals and take coordinated steps to ensure the soonest settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan, and we also call upon all forces in Afghanistan to show political will and wisdom, overcome their disagreements and mutual hostilities and not to miss a historic opportunity to achieve stable and long-lasting peace.
13. The present Declaration is written in two originals, in English and Russian and both texts are equally authentic.
Arranged in the city of Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan, on 19th July 1999.
For the Government of the People’s Republic of China – [signed]
For the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran – [signed]
For the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan – [signed]
For the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan – [signed]
For the Government of Turkmenistan – [not signed]
For the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan – [signed]
For the Government of the Russian Federation – [signed]
For the Government of the United States of America – [signed]
As observer
For the United Nations – [signed]
Source: ‘Narodnoye Slovo’, Tashkent, in Russian 19 Jul 99.
Appendix Two
AFGHANISTAN: CHRONOLOGY OF MAIN EVENTS
July 1973, King Zahir Shah was ousted in a military coup led by his cousin, Mohammad Daoud.
17 Apr 1978 President Daoud was overthrown and killed in a coup organised by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Nur Mohammad Taraki was elected president of the Revolutionary Council.
Sept 1979 Internal power struggle within the PDPA leadership led to the overthrow and assassination of President Nur Mohammad Taraki and his replacement by Hafizullah Amin.
Dec 1979 On 25 December 1979, Soviet troops landed in Kabul. The relatively more moderate member of the PDPA, Babrak Karmal, became President. Hafizullah Amin was executed.
Jan 1980 UN General Assembly called for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Afghan guerrillas in Pakistan received arms from Pakistan, the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and China.
1986 Mohammad Najibullah became President.
14 Apr 1988 Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union and the US signed the Geneva Accord for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
15 Feb 1989 Soviet forces started their withdrawal from Afghanistan in February. The last Soviet soldiers left in April. Muhammad Najibullah became president and started a campaign to win support from the general public, and even started talking favourably about Islam. Mojahedin Consultative Council elected moderate Sibghatullah Mojadidi as President and hard-liner Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf as Prime Minister.
25 April 1992 With the desertion of the powerful northern militia leader Abdurrashid Dostum, Najibullah was deposed and was given refuge in the UN compound in Kabul. Sibghatullah Mojadidi became head of state, assisted by Shah Ahmad Masoud as defence minister. After three months, Mojadidi was replaced by Burhanuddin Rabbani as president.
1992-1993 Battles between various Mujahedin factions reduced Kabul to rubble. Rabbani’s government was confronted on two sides, both by the Iranian-backed Shi’a Hizb-e Vahdat and the Saudi-backed Ittihad-e Islami, led by Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf, and Hizb-e Islami, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In one major rocket attack on Kabul in August 1992 by Sayyaf’s forces, more than 1,800 civilians were killed and a large number fled to Mazar-e Sharif.
Feb 1993 As a result of negotiations between various warring factions, Rabbani remained as president and Hekmatyar was made prime minister, but the agreement was more on paper than in practice. Heavy street fighting between Sayyaf’s Ittihad-e Islami and those of Hezb-e Vahdat continued. Masoud’s forces eventually joined on the side of Sayyaf’s forces, and this led to a massacre of the Shi’i forces of Hizb-e Vahdat in February 1993.
July 1994 The sudden emergence of the Taliban. Mullah Mohammad Omar Akhund sets up the Taliban, allegedly an Islamic student group that emerged as a guerrilla force. It was clear from the start that Pakistan had been behind the creation of the Taliban, as they received a great deal of military and financial, as well as training and organisational support.
Oct 1994 Pakistani Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar, trying to show that Pakistan was a potential outlet for Central Asian trade, made a highly publicised trip across Afghanistan, via Kandahar and Herat in October, and then organised a trade convoy to cover the same route. This convoy was protected by the newly emerged group, the Taleban, leading to speculation that Pakistan was lending support to the Taleban.
1995 Taliban forces reached Kabul in February but were repelled. In October, they were back again. Intensive fighting and bombing of Kabul went on.
5 Sept 1995 The Taleban took Herat, which was under the control of Ismail Khan, who was allied to the government. Ismail Khan had taken Herat Province in April 1992, when the Soviet-backed government had fallen, and had gradually increased his dominion or influence over the Western provinces of Farah and Nimroz, to the south, and Baghdis to the northwest. The victory of the Taliban over Herat was assisted by Dostum to provide air support to the advance. Over 20,000 people fled Herat after the city fell to the Taliban.
April 1996 Some 1,000 Muslim clergymen were reported to have chosen Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar Akhund as Amir al-Mu’menin (the Commander of the Faithful), denouncing Burhanuddin Rabbani as unfit to lead the Islamic nation.
27 Sept 1996 After conquering large areas of the country, the Taliban took control of Kabul, dragging Najibullah and his brother Shahpur Ahmadzai from the UN headquarters and hanging them in public view without any trial. Some 50,000 people fled Kabul after the city fell to the Taliban.
Three days before Kabul fell, a Taliban plane was hijacked by its own crew and flown to a government airfield. The pilot allegedly said he was defecting to draw attention to Pakistan’s involvement in Afghan affairs. Seven Pakistani officers were on the plane. They were captured by the government in Kabul and were put on public view in front of the international media.
The Taliban declared that Afghanistan was a ‘completely Islamic state.’ They called it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They forced women to wear a Burqa, closed all the girls’ schools, prevented women from receiving treatment in hospitals, banned female employment outside their homes, banned television, forced men to grow beards and to have short haircuts, and enforced strict “Islamic” law. The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced [5 Dec.]: “Since the Prophet, Muhammad, peace be upon him, did not trim his beard all his life, therefore all government employees are hereby informed that they should grow their bears within a month and a half, in accordance with the noble Hadith and the Prophet, in order to be regarded as a true Muslim.”
In the following weeks, the Taliban conquered over two-thirds of Afghanistan but were still facing stiff resistance from Ahmad Shah Masoud’s Tajik forces in Panjshir Valley and Abdurrashid Dostum’s Uzbek forces in the north of the country.
Oct 1996 One of the most radical Islamic parties in Pakistan, Jamiat-al-Ulema al-Islami, which is headed by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, announced on 2nd October that it had prepared a draft constitution for Afghanistan at the request of the Taliban.
On 2nd October, President Boris Yeltsin called for a summit meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). His national security adviser said that the victory of the Taliban posed a serious threat to the Central Asian Republics because, he said, it wanted to annex parts of them. It was announced that the presidents of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and the Russian prime minister, would meet in Almaty. Only Turkmenistan did not take part in the meeting. President Niyazov said, “We do not quite share the results of the Almaty summit. We believe the conflict in Afghanistan is an Afghan domestic affair.”
The American oil company, UNOCOL, in a statement issued on 2nd October, said that it regarded the Taliban’s new dominance in Afghanistan as a ‘positive development.’ It argued that a single government there would bring stability and improve the prospects of proceeding with plans to build oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan.
The US government was also reported as saying that it saw nothing objectionable in what the Taliban had done and that it would seek a meeting with the Taliban. However, on 8th October, the State Department issued a statement in which it warned the Taliban administration that recognition would be contingent on the rights of women being respected.
In contrast, Iran was vociferous in its criticism of the Taliban. On 7 October, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, in a Friday sermon, said: “In the neighbourhood of Iran, something is taking place in the name of Islam, and a group whose knowledge of Islam is unknown has embarked on actions having nothing to do with Islam.” Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, toured Central Asia and India to stress the need for a cease-fire and a broad-based government.
On 12 October, the charge d’affaires at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kabul passed on the congratulations of the Saudi king, and expressed delight at the enforcement of the sacred Muhammadan law in Afghanistan and the peace and security which had been restored in most parts of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
17 Oct 1996 The UN Security Council issued a resolution in which it expressed concern at what it described as extreme discrimination against women and urged strict adherence to the norms of international law.
24 Oct 1996 The European Parliament adopted a resolution in which it called on all states to oppose the Taliban administration in Kabul because of what it called systematic discrimination against Afghan women, the numerous violations of human rights and the forcible indoctrination of the Afghan people.
May 1997 At the end of May 1997, Commander Malik turned against his boss Dostum, for allegedly having killed his brother, and defected to the Taliban. Dostum fled to Turkey, and the Taliban forces entered Mazar-e Sharif on 24th May. On the same day, Pakistan recognised the new Taliban government, to be joined later by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. However, as Taliban forces were trying to disarm the forces of Malik and of the Islamic Vahdat party, they turned against the Taliban, killed many hundreds and took some 700, including the foreign minister of the Taliban and the commander of northern Afghanistan, hostage. A mass grave was discovered in November 1997 containing some 2,000 bodies, presumably belonging to Taliban fighters.
June 1997: Pakistan tried to mediate between the Taliban and the forces of Malik, saying that Malik could have full autonomy in the north and that his forces and those of the Shi’ites would not be disarmed. This would have been the first time that the Taliban have agreed to share power in Afghanistan. The conflict, however, still continued with no end in sight. In September, Dostum returned to Afghanistan and joined another coalition against the Taliban.
July 1997 An agreement reached between UNOCOL, Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia and the Pakistan and Turkmen governments provided for the construction of a gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan to Pakistan, through Afghanistan, to commence at the end of 1998. UNOCOL, however, commented that it would not start the construction work until there was an internationally recognized government in full control of Afghanistan.
25 Oct 1997: President Saparmurad Niyazov of Turkmenistan announced the signing of a 2bn dollar protocol between his government and CentGas, a consortium of seven companies led by UNOCAL (owner of 54.11 percent of CentGas), for the construction of a 1,400km pipeline from Dawlatabad, Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan to Multan, Pakistan, to carry 20 billion cubic metres of gas annually. In the spring of 1997, UNOCAL opened an office in Kandahar, the bastion of the Taliban movement. Dawlatabad gas field is estimated to be able to produce 15 billion cubic feet of gas per year for 30 years.
Dec 1997: Iran organised a conference of all Afghan factions in Isfahan from 1-3 December, to try to find a peaceful settlement of the conflict. All opposition factions and representatives of the former Afghan government took part, but the Taliban stayed away. Later, Pakistan arranged meetings between the representatives of the Taliban, Iran and Pakistan. After the first meeting, Taliban representatives boycotted the meetings.
April 1998: On 17th April, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Kabul at the head of a delegation and met with the chairman of the Caretaker Council, Alhaj Mola Mohammad Rabbani. Richardson was quoted by Bakhtar Information Agency as saying: “The US considers Afghanistan as its friend and respects Islam and Islamic values and wants to have close relations with Islam. The US completely defends peace, the independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan and wants to resolve all issues related to America peacefully, and the US has never spared any efforts in this.” [Radio Voice of Shari’ah, Kabul in Pashto, 1500 GMT, 17 April].
August 1998: Fourteen months after their short-lived triumph over the remaining opposition to their rule in their northern stronghold, Taliban forces captured Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province, on 2nd August, and Mazar-e Sharif on the 8th. This gave the Taliban control of nearly 90 per cent of Afghanistan. The Uzbek leader, General Abdurrashid Dostum, and President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the nominal president and leader of the Jonbesh-e Melli-e Eslami-e Afghanistan, fled. Iran claimed that the Taliban had taken 11 Iranian diplomats and a journalist as hostages when they overran the Iranian Consulate in Mazar-e Sharif. The Taliban say that they might have been killed. They also captured a few dozen Iranian truck drivers.
The Tajik Commander, Ahmad Shah Masoud, was still holding out in the Panjshir Valley, and Hezb-e Vahdat-e Eslami (a mainly Shi’i group) composed mainly of the Hazaras was continuing their struggle in the Bamian region. Dostum claimed that 12 Pakistani aircraft and some 1,500 Pakistani commandos had participated in the fall of his military base in his hometown of Sheberghan on 31 July. [MEI, 21 August].
4 August: Following a meeting between the chief of the Russian general staff, General Anatoly Kvashnin, and Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Pastukhov with their Uzbek counterparts in Tashkent, a joint communique expressed “deep concern” at the escalation of fighting in Afghanistan and demanded that the Taliban stop their armed activity “immediately.” [MEI, 21 August].
11 August: After the Taliban captured Taloqan, Rabbani’s headquarters, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman said that Pakistan was directly involved in the fighting in the country and in supplying military equipment to Taliban.
20 August: The United States fired several cruise missiles at the suspected guerrilla camps of the Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, near the towns of Khost and Jalalabad, close to the Pakistani border. It was reported that 15 people were killed in one of his training camps. Seven others were allegedly killed in two other camps belonging to Pakistani groups (Harakat al-Ansar and Harakat al-Mujahedin). During the anti-Soviet jihad, some 30,000 Muslim volunteers (half of them Arabs) joined the fighting. Usama Bin Laden, who attracted 4,000 volunteers from Saudi Arabia, became the nominal leader of the “Arab Afghans.” In that capacity, he developed cordial relations with the leaders of the more radical Mujahedin, including Mullah Muhammad Omar, of the Hizb-e Islami (Khalis group), who later emerged as the Taliban leader. Bin Laden has been accused of having been involved in the bomb explosion, off a National Guard’s premises in Riyadh in November 1995, killing five US officers and in the truck bombing on 25 June 1996 near the Dhahran air base, which killed 19 US troops and injured over 400. He is also accused of masterminding the explosions in Nairobi and Da-Es-Salam, which killed more than 250 people, including 12 Americans, and injured 5,000 people.
The Taliban announced that Osama Bin Laden remained safe and vowed never to turn him over to the United States. [Reuters, 21 August]. AIP reported that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had rebuffed an American approach for talks. He was quoted as saying: “If the United States wants to restore its esteem, it should remove President Clinton from his post and withdraw its forces from the Gulf.” [Reuters, Aug 25] Pakistan also denounced US air strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan as a violation of the territorial integrity of two Islamic countries. “The government of Pakistan expresses indignation at the US strikes at Afghanistan and Sudan,” Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz told the Senate after government and opposition speakers had blasted the American action.
21 August: The Turkish foreign ministry said that the Taliban movement had deported about fifty thousand people from the territory it captured in the north earlier in the month. A foreign ministry official in Ankara said that the Taliban is now forcing tens of thousands of Uzbeks, Turkmen and Tajiks to leave their homes in the recently captured territory in the north of the country. The Turkish minister responsible for Central Asia, Ahat Andican, told the BBC in an interview that the purpose is to create a new state in Afghanistan dominated by one ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
28 Aug UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution No. 1193 on Afghanistan. According to the Resolution, the large-scale military actions mounted by the Taliban movement are seen as a serious threat to regional and international peace. The Resolution demanded that all the Afghan groups, especially the Taliban, should guarantee the necessary conditions to ensure the safety of the international personnel working in Afghanistan, while strongly condemning Taliban attacks on UN staff, including murders of members of staff from international organisations. It also demanded an end to human rights violations, discrimination against girls and women, the provision of refuge for terrorists and activities linked to drug trafficking.
29 Aug According to ‘Al-Hayah’, the Taleban had massed some 11,000 troops in areas bordering Iran during the past few days. According to this report, 6,000 Taliban troops were deployed in the Afghan Governorate of Nimroz, which borders the Iranian area of Zabol, and a further 5,000 were deployed in the Farah Governorate, near the Birjand area.
1-3 Sept Dostum flew to Turkey to seek help from Turkish officials.
2-4 Sept: About 70,000 Islamic Revolution Guards staged military exercises close to the Afghan border.
3 Sept Tajik and Russian forces conducted military exercises on the Tajik-Afghan border. Tajik President Emomali Rahmanov observed the joint tactical exercises. Meanwhile, two Russian border guards were killed in a gun battle with an unidentified armed group on the Tajik border with Afghanistan.
3 Sept Turkish President Suleyman Demirel sent messages to the leaders of five CIS Central Asian republics, calling on them to hold a summit to discuss the conflict in Afghanistan.
3 Sept Amnesty International accused the Taliban militia of massacring thousands of civilians after capturing Mazar-e Sharif. Amnesty said it had evidence that a large number of those killed were from the minority group, the Hazaras. Amnesty said its information was based on the statements of eyewitnesses and survivors. They were quoted as saying that Taliban troops killed Shi’ites in their homes, on the streets and in areas surrounding the city. They said many of those killed were women, children and the elderly who were allegedly shot as they tried to flee the city. Thousands more had been arrested
3 Sept A US telecommunications company, Telephone System International (TSI), signed a $240 million agreement with the Taliban to install a communication network across the country.
8 Sept The United States expressed serious concern over the build-up of Iranian forces on Afghanistan’s borders and urged Tehran against military action. State Department Spokesman James Rubin said that Iran had deployed “significant numbers of troops and equipment” on its borders with Afghanistan. “So clearly, this is a matter of serious concern, and it’s something we’re watching extremely closely,” he said. While stressing that holding diplomats “for any reason or at any time” was unacceptable under international law, he made it clear “We do not support any interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.”
10 Sept Taliban officials confirmed that nine Iranian diplomats at the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e Sharif had been killed by Taliban forces without authorisation and that their bodies would be returned to Iran.
11 Sept The United Nations Security Council condemned the killing of nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e Sharif. A statement called for an urgent investigation into the deaths, which it called a violation of international law.
12 Sept Iran announced that it was sending two hundred thousand additional troops to the border with Afghanistan, in what the Iranian army described as their biggest ever troop exercise. United States intelligence officials said they believed Iran was planning an incursion into Afghan territory.
13 Sept Taleban forces captured Bamian, the capital of the mainly Shi’i Bamian province, after four days of intensive fighting.
15 Sept Ayatollah Khamene’i called on Iranian military forces to be ready to carry out any operations which might be deemed necessary in the face of Taliban advances. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, called for UN mediation between Iran and the Taliban “to sort out the differences”.
8 Oct A border clash occurred between the Iranian forces and the Taliban. The Taliban said two people were killed and five others were injured in Afghan territory.
10-13 Oct U.N. envoy on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, held talks in Tehran and Islamabad to mediate between Iran and Afghanistan.
13 Oct A new anti-Taleban coalition was set up in Tashkent on Monday [12 October]. The new coalition has been created by three CIS countries. The presidents of Russia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have signed a joint declaration. According to the document, should a situation arise which, in one of the sides’ opinion, poses a threat to its security, territorial integrity, or sovereignty or poses a threat to peace and security in the region, the three countries will immediately take the necessary measures to remove the threat.
14 Oct Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban Islamic movement said on Wednesday it had agreed to release 25 Iranian prisoners in talks with a U.N. envoy seeking to ease tensions between the two sides. Mullah Mohammad Omar told the U.N. envoy on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, that he would release the Iranians if opposition groups and Tehran guaranteed to free Taliban prisoners. Brahimi held talks with Omar and other Taliban officials in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar after arriving by a special plane from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
19 Oct 25 Iranian prisoners were released by the Taliban. Iranian and Afghan sources said that they were prepared to hold direct talks in order to resolve their differences.
1999
7th July The United States imposed sanctions on the Taliban movement, which controls most of Afghanistan, accusing it of supporting the Islamic militant, Osama Bin Laden.
19th July The foreign ministers of the so-called six-plus-two met in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent and issued a declaration calling on the warring factions to declare a cease-fire and to establish a broad-based government. The group was comprised of the six countries bordering on Afghanistan — Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – as well as Russia and the United States, with the participation of Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi. The Taliban also took part in the meeting and expressed optimism about reaching a peaceful outcome.
26th July The Taliban forces launched a major offensive against the forces of their main opposition force led by Ahmad Shah Masood, in Panjshir Valley. Shortly before the offensive, there were reports that the Taliban had been bolstered by the arrival of new recruits – thousands of Pakistanis and hundreds of Arabs – for a fresh offensive against commander Masood’s forces.
25 August A massive car bomb went off in front of the building housing Mulla Mohammad Omar. At least 10 were killed and a number were wounded. Omar escaped unhurt, but his house was destroyed. It was not clear whether Omar or Osama Bin Laden had been the target of the attack. It was said that the bomb could have been the work of the Americans, or the Saudis, or the Iranians, or Masood’s people, or factional fighting inside the Taliban.
End notes:
[1] ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1917 GMT 19 Jul 99.
[2] Reuters, July 20, 1999.
[3] Asia-Plus news agency, Dushanbe, in Russian 0300 GMT 11 Aug 99.
[4] Source: Radio Voice of Shari’ah, Kabul, in Pashto 1500 GMT 15 Aug 99. See: BBC Monitoring Newsfile, 16 August 1999.
[5] The Russian Foreign Ministry on 16th August 1999 accused overseas Islamic groups, including those connected with the Afghan drugs trade and Osama bin Laden, of being partly responsible for channelling funds through charities to the separatists in the North Caucasus. Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Kuzminykh told Russian Ekho Moskvy radio that some of these funds to separatists in the breakaway North Caucasus republic of Chechnya amounted to tens of millions of dollars, and that the Russian federal government was stepping up efforts to cut off these funds. See: Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 1200 GMT 16 Aug 99, published in BBC Monitoring Newsfile, 16 Aug 99.
Bader Binfar al-Shishani, roving Chechen ambassador in the Middle East for humanitarian affairs, said that members of the movement, which calls itself “Chechen Strugglers” [Al-Mojahedin al-Shishan], led by Muhammad al-Khattab, who is of Jordanian origin, came from Afghanistan in 1992 under the cover of an Islamic movement to learn Arabic language and Islamic law. Quoted in: `Al-Sharq al-Awsat’ website, London, in Arabic 15 Aug 99.
[6] ICRC News, “Afghanistan: the deadly legacy, some figures”, 14 February 1996 [Internet].
[7] United Nations Demining Database, “Afghanistan: Country Report”, quoted by Barnett R. Rubin, “Afghanistan: The Forgotten Crisis”, Writenet Country Papers. Writenet (UK), February 1996.
[8] For a controversial expose of an extraordinary alliance between the United States and radical Islamic movements, and the extent of American and Pakistani involvement in the creation of the Taliban, see: John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto Press, London, 1999).
[9] Britannica World Data in the Britannica Book of the Year, 1979.
[10] US State Department Testimony on Afghanistan, testimony by Julia V. Taft, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, 9 March 1999 [Internet].
[11] See: Louis Dupree, Afghanistan (Princeton University Press, 1980 edition), pp 66-112.
[12] For the general history of Afghanistan, see: Sir Percy Sykes, The History of Afghanistan (1940). For later history, see: W. K. Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan: a Study of Political Development in Central and Southern Asia, 2nd edition (1953). For recent history, see: Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1995), and Amin Saikal and William Maley, eds. The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 1989). On the emergence of the Taliban, see John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars, op cit.; Peter Marsden, The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order in Afghanistan (Zed Books, London and New York, 1998); and William Maley, ed., Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban (New York University Press, New York, 1998).
[13] For the history of Nadir Shah’s exploits, see: L. Lockhart, Nadir Shah (1938).
[14] Impact International, vol. 27, No 10, October 1997, pp 26-28.
[15] Ibid.
[16] See: Barnett R. Rubin, “Afghanistan: The Forgotten Crisis”, Writenet Country Papers. Writenent (UK), February 1996.
[17] Radio Voice of Shari’ah, Kabul in Pashtu, 1500 GMT, 5 December 1995. See BBC Monitoring Newsfile 5 December 1995.
[18] See BBC Monitoring Newsfile, 7 October 1996.
[19] Quoted in: Middle East International, 21 August 1998.
[20] Reuters, 3rd September 1999.
[21] London ‘Al-Hayah’ (Internet version) in Arabic 29 Aug 98, pp 1 and 6.
[22] BBC Monitoring Newsfile, 1 Sep 1998.
[23] Middle East International, 21 August 1998.
[24] See Jonathan Steele’s article in ‘The Guardian’, Wednesday, 9 October 1996.
[25] Radio Voice of Shari’ah, Kabul in Pashtu, 1500 GMT, 17 April 1998. See: BBC Monitoring Newsfile 17 April 1998.
[26] Reuters, 8 September 1998.
[27] Reuters, 21 August 1998.
[28] Reuters, Aug 25 1998.
[29] Reuters, 21 August 1998.
[30] Reuters, 15th August, ‘The Guardian’, 16th August 1999, p10.
[31] Urdu-language newspaper, ‘Jang’, published in Rawalpindi (to the south of the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad), wrote on 20th July 1999 that the Taliban had warned America against launching new attacks against Afghanistan. At the same time, according to the same newspaper, a leader of a Kashmiri fighters’ group has warned that he would fight against the US. The leader of the Harakat al-Mujahidin (Mujahidin Movement), Mawlana Fazl ol-Rahman Khalil, said in a statement on Monday (19th July): “If the US attacks Afghanistan again, the world will see its results.” He added, “Americans should know that by attacking Afghanistan, they will be wishing death upon themselves.” According to Pakistani media, a large number of Kashmiri fighters have left the Kargil area (in Kashmir) for Afghanistan to defend Osama Bin Laden’s life.
[32] See John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars, p 229.
[33] ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0346 GMT 17 Aug 99. See: BBC Monitoring Newsfile, 17 August 1999.
[34] Press Statement by James P. Rubin, US State Department Spokesman:Afghanistan: Peace Proposal, March 13, 1999.
[35] The Pakistani newspaper ‘Jang’ on 10th August 1999 reported: “The eminent holy warrior of the Islamic world, Osama bin Laden, has said that the United States can do no harm to them unless ordered by God. He said that they have sold their lives to God, and it is their belief that no power can increase or decrease their life even by one breath. He said that real life is the life hereafter and that he wants to work for that.
He expressed these views in an interview. He said that an attack on Afghanistan would prove very costly to the United States. An attack on Afghanistan, he said, would be considered an attack on the Islamic world. He said that if the United States committed the folly of attacking Afghanistan, it would have to bear its consequences for a long time. He said that the craving for jihad has spread among the Muslims with the speed of an electric current and that Islam has once again destroyed all idols. He said that not just one, but hundreds and thousands of Osamas have been born in the Islamic world. In the interview, Osama appealed to Muslim youth to dedicate their lives to Islam.”
Source: ‘Jang’, Rawalpindi, in Urdu 10 Aug 99 pp 1 and 7.
[36] Report of the UN Secretary-General: THE SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY, 31 March 1999.
F Jahanpour 